When it comes to flying around the country on commercial aircraft for business or pleasure, the length of the flight was traditionally one spent without access to internet or other forms of communication with the ground.

Many commercial airlines have announced over the last year that they are going to offer in-flight internet access. Today Virgin America announced that it had launched in-flight internet access via provider Gogo on select aircraft.

Virgin plans to equip multiple aircraft with the Gogo service by the end of 2008 and plans to extend the service fleet-wide by Q2 2009. American Airlines will also be using Gogo for its in-flight internet service, but was only planning to equip its 15 767-200 aircraft with the service when first announced in June.

Virgin America reports that it unveiled its Gogo service on November 22 and performed the first Air-to-ground video stream from YouTube. The first week of launch for the service was a beta launch and it was free to all passengers on the flight.

Once the service is out of beta and offered to passengers it will cost $12.95 for flights over three hours and $9.95 for flights under three hours. AirCell, the company behind Gogo, and rival JetBlue both received their in-flight Wi-Fi licenses from the FCC in June of 2006.

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Why not allow unfiltered content, and place responsibility upon the user? Add a small additional fee for the use of one of those polarized privacy screens, and stipulate in the user agreement any content of differing varieties or 'ratings' must be accessed under the condition of using said privacy screen and maybe even provided headphones w/ minimal noise leakage? If the user breaks the agreement, then restrict or bar their access along with penalization even.Is there currently some way for a flight attendant to put a stop to a passenger playing a very gory and violent game on their laptop while seated next to child? What if they opened paint and began drawing stick figures of mature content? Furthermore, what is a passenger is watching an animal planet clip with two monkey going at it?If you wouldn't interfere with that laptop user if they were not connected to the internet, than any internet access provided shouldn't interfere with the user's access to content. The service should, however, be conditionally provided on a basis of responsible use by a passenger; though containment of exposure of their potentially offensive content to others.

I looked at the link and the Arabic writing is incorrect. It uses the Arabic characters but in a very incorrect way

I tried to read it and -I think- it says something like:

"exchange Egypt intelligence force"

Not enough attention to details. It's the same in most games. for example in battlefield series, almost all the Arabic writings are wrong and when I say wrong, it's like writing English characters upside down and inside out type of wrong!!

If any of you guys is in a game dev team, for love of God, please send the writings to me or someone else who knows the language first. I'll check them for free.

-Unless this is intentional and is done to avoid offending anyone- ;-)

I have a T-Mobile Blackberry that allows me to make phone calls over Wi-Fi (their Hot Spot stuff) and I know other providers are rolling out Femtocells. Will they ban this? If I am allowed enough bandwidth and it's not blocked I could essentially make phone calls while flying.